Meeting for Sufferings: Sufferings considers Sanctuary Everywhere
Meeting for Sufferings considered a proposed 'Sanctuary Everywhere Manifesto' on 7 October
Meeting for Sufferings, held at Manchester Meeting House on Mount Street on Saturday 7 October, was asked, as part of the ongoing work on forced migration, to approve a ‘Sanctuary Everywhere Manifesto’. The Manifesto was part of the annual report of Quaker Peace & Social Witness Central Committee (QPSWCC). It was provisionally approved by the Committee but was subject to the approval of Meeting for Sufferings.
Helen Drewery, head of witness and worship, who spoke to the report, said ‘whatever you agree will determine what kind of subjects we will campaign on. So, there is a real decision to make today.’
She said: ‘Many will remember the series of minutes in Meeting for Sufferings on “forced migration” earlier this year. We have been working on the causes – such as sustainability – but addressed forced migration by creating a legacy funded project’.
Tim Gee was appointed to do exploratory work with British Quakers and report on what was being done at a local level. It was, she explained, a ‘listening’ project to discern, also, what Friends wanted to do. The pilot project, Sanctuary Everywhere, has been extended for a further two years.
A key part of Sanctuary Meetings is to support Meetings that wish to ‘build a culture of welcome and to oppose racism’. Friends wanted, she said, to be involved in advocacy and mentioned the conference at Woodbrooke on forced migration held earlier this year.
Helen Drewery then went through the Sanctuary Everywhere Manifesto that Friends in the room had in their documents.
She said the points contained in the manifesto had come from statements made by Britain Yearly Meeting and would help QPSW to work with organisations such as Amnesty International and the Refugee Council. She asked if Meeting for Sufferings ‘would like to accept the Manifesto’ (see below).
The matter was then put before the Meeting. A Friend, in response, was worried that it did not mention ‘all peaceful means’ of increasing routes of safe passage for people seeking sanctuary – but just ‘all means’. He said this was vague and that, while he endorsed the general principles underlying the Manifesto, he would wish for this to be changed.
A Friend wanted clarification on who was being referred to. He asked: ‘Did it include people who have committed serious offences? If they were to be deported would Friends oppose this?’
Helen Drewery, who responded, said ‘we are saying “people are people”’ but then referred the question to Bridget Walker, of the Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network, who explained that it was a ‘complex’ issue. She talked of foreign nationals who had served a sentence of more than twelve months, who did not have a British passport and who were deported – and similar offenders who had one. She said there was ‘an inequality there’.
A Friend highlighted the difference between ‘Nigerians and Ghanaians’ looking for jobs and asylum seekers fleeing conflict. There were, the Friend explained, ‘many complexities’ to the story.
Bridget Walker said that there were, of course, legal definitions of asylum seekers and referred to that of the United Nations High Commisssioner for Refugees.
Many people, she said, feel ‘forced’ to move and many meet a hostile environment in Britain. This includes, she said, people from the European Union. She said: ‘Areas such as health, education and housing are all internal borders for some people.’
Another Friend was disappointed that there was no reference to Quaker faith or any reflection of the fact that Friends believed that ‘each person is unique’. The Manifesto, she said, ‘could have been written by any voluntary organisation’.
A Friend who supported ‘the overall thrust’ of the document was uneasy ‘around definitions’ and felt more work on it was required. Those speaking out beyond the Religious Society of Friends, he said, needed to ‘be able to answer questions on subjects such as serial offenders’ and who is included and who is not. It was ‘all rather vague’.
Another Friend said ‘my sense is that we fundamentally support the principles. The difficulty is in the interpretation. Does it mean “no border control”?’
A Friend was ‘troubled deeply’ by the Manifesto. The ‘principles are fine’ but ‘it is more to do with the practice’. She explained that local Friends had agreed to open their Meeting as a place of sanctuary – but that only she, and another Friend, actually volunteered. No other local Quakers turned up.
The final minute on the subject stated: ‘We feel it is important to make more explicit the Quaker basis behind the Manifesto and to refer it back to Quaker Peace & Social Witness.’
Sanctuary Everywhere Manifesto
We stand by the principle that no person should be discriminated against because of who they are or where they were born. We will speak out and support campaigns to promote this principle. This is the policy change we call for:
1. Every person in the UK should have the right to work, the right to learn and the right to adequate government support if it is needed. We oppose a ‘two-tier’ system as inherently discriminatory.
2. We support all means of increasing routes to safe passage for people seeking sanctuary, including the introduction of a system of humanitarian visas and increasing the scope of family reunion rules.
3. We believe immigration detention to be neither right nor necessary. Until such time as detention is ended we will campaign for a time limit.
4. We stand together with people born in the EU and people from beyond in opposing deportations. It is impossible for a human being to be illegal.
5. We will insist that existing human rights standards be the foundation on which any UN agreement on migration is built.
6. Through all this we commit to resisting racism and bigotry by interrogating our own histories, listening and taking action.
